[TenTec] Flex Radio for Contesting

[Jim Brown]

On Wed,12/9/2015 3:12 AM, Barry N1EU wrote:
> The bottom line, as far as I can tell, is that Flex engineering made a
> clear decision, at this point anyway, of providing only ULTRA steep (i.e.,
> vertical) filter slopes resulting in higher latency.  I make the argument
> that shallower filter slopes are often preferable and should be an option.

I haven't heard a Flex, but I suspect that you are right on target, 
Barry. Filter slope can have huge impact on the useability of a filter 
-- the "wrong" slope results in severe ringing, making it difficult to 
copy in the presence of noise.

One of the more valid criticisms I've heard of Flex and some other SDRs 
is that the designers and authors of firmware/software are 
computer-techies but not operators -- they might make a dozen QSOs per 
year if they operate at all -- so they have no idea how radios work or 
how hams use them. A few months ago, one of those guys who lives near 
me, did me the favor of showing me an ANAN radio that I hoped to use for 
spectrum measurements. He falls into that category -- he fires up every 
few weeks to rag chew with his buddies. When I asked him to send a 
series of dits so we could look at a CW signal, he didn't have a paddle. 
He didn't even have a bare TRS plug that we could short contacts to 
produce dits.

73, Jim K9YC